Manager Tools Responsiblity Ladder

Manager tools offers a framework to “teach directs how to go from handling individual tasks to managing their own work independently.”

They recommend taking each direct (even the most senior) through increasingly levels of responsiblity to make sure they aren’t missing any core skills:

• Assign Deliverables First to make sure they can complete well scoped tasks on time.
• Assign Research Tasks to make sure they can make a project plan with a sequence of clearly defined deliverables.
• Ask for Analysis to make sure they can do comparative research of the Situation, Options, and Comparison.
• Ask for Recommendations so they can start evaluating different factors before they take complete responsiblity for making the right decision (e.g. realizing that the best outcome might not be implemented because of internal political factors)
• Delegate the Decision when we can fully support their decisions as our own (even if they make a different decision than we would have) and fully trust them to implement the choice.